"This can only hurt Linux. Ubuntu is basically trying to force vendor lock in and injecting uncertainty into the market at a time when Linux needs to be focused on being developer friendly. Am I going to port a game to Linux when all those drivers (graphics, mouse/keyboard, etc) might not even be available/stable for the biggest distro? Or if I want to at least have the option of being on more than Ubuntu, I'd have to test on 2-3 completely different systems (Mir, Wayland, X11). This could be horrible if you wanted to bring a CAD program to Linux - you need stability and very high graphics performance, and will likely want to be on Ubuntu LTS and RHEL."

Thinking on this gives me the impression that Ubuntu wants to a) Tighten Controls on Ubuntu b) isolate itself even more from Linux. Going full propriety commercial enterprise path.

what's that supposed to mean? What will happen to Mint then? I have always hated this fishy Ubuntu project! Ubuntu keeps venturing into uncharted waters and will lose track of it in the end just as Mir did when " it burnt and crashed into the South Pacific Ocean near Fiji on 23rd March, 2001, after some dudes in Russia flipped a switch after they gave it up"

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=127529 - Join the discussion here. Given that Mark Shuttleworth is a space tourist / enthusiast , new window manager's name, could well have been inspired by the Russian space station. Mir also means world, i read somewhere.

Seriously, am thinking, can Mint start a Kickstarter campain and ramp up their team to deal and support with all the changes that're happening around. Am not against *buntu or anything, just that I want Mint to stand on its own. Really.

tdockery97 wrote:In light of this announcement it is clear that Clem will now need to make a decision on the future direction of Mint. From my small corner of the world I see three possibilities for Mint:

1. Continue to follow Ubuntu's path.

2. Continue independent development and updating of the current Ubuntu base on into the future regardless of the direction Ubuntu is going.

3. Completely change the base of the Main Editions to something such as Debian.

Whatever the decision, I see very interesting times ahead.

That's what I was thinking. Glad you said it.I suspect at the end of the day Mint may want to go Independent instead of being a fork of anything. It would be nice to set your own rules and make your own changes rather than be subject to the whims of others.

They say, innovation is disruptive. While I hope Canonical keeps Mir open-source (in spirit) and brings in postive changes to graphical display and so-called convergence, I can not understand why they want to go completely on their own, except for commercial reasons.

With the growing user base of Mint, i think, it can surely stand on its own with support from community.

I think it would be best for Mint to put their support behind Wayland. Lots of people are going to be pissed at Canonical (again), and Mint could catch those people on the rebound.

Of course that's not the only reason, another reason is that Canonical simply does not have enough staff that is skilled enough with the Linux graphics stack to be able to write a display server competently. My guess is this will be as crappy as the first versions of Unity. Wayland on the other hand is a very smooth protocol.

anandrkris wrote:Seriously, am thinking, can Mint start a Kickstarter campain and ramp up their team to deal and support with all the changes that're happening around. Am not against *buntu or anything, just that I want Mint to stand on its own. Really.

I was just thinking today that there should be a Kickstarter to boost Wayland development, like a joint marketing effort with Mint and other distros and various parties spreading the word!

Tonttu wrote:I was just thinking today that there should be a Kickstarter to boost Wayland development, like a joint marketing effort with Mint and other distros and various parties spreading the word!

Tonttu wrote:I was just thinking today that there should be a Kickstarter to boost Wayland development, like a joint marketing effort with Mint and other distros and various parties spreading the word!

Now, here is an idea!

I will contact X.Org Foundation and Collabora to ask, if they could organize such a campaign. I mean, if LiveCode open sourcing got $750k, it is only logical to suppose Wayland will reach $1M! However, marketing will be the easy part: finding developers will be harder.

I don't know. Wayland is already open source, usually crowdsourcing campaigns offer some kind of rewards for contributions. What could the wayland project offer as rewards other than "we'll maybe get wayland finished faster"?

dee. wrote:I don't know. Wayland is already open source, usually crowdsourcing campaigns offer some kind of rewards for contributions. What could the wayland project offer as rewards other than "we'll maybe get wayland finished faster"?

I would donate to the Wayland developers in a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign just to see Wayland succeed and Mir failing.As prizes they just need to write the following:

"The more money Wayland gets, the more aware AMD and Nvidia will be of the interest of the Linux community that they support Wayland with their blobs""The more money Wayland gets, the more likely it will be the new display server standard when X.Org rides into the sunset.""The more money Wayland gets, the more likely Mir won't be adopted as standard and Canonical's move to try to control such a crucial upstream component will fail."

Practically, they could just mention the BIG sponsor names in a Wiki page / credits / somewhere - to please any megalomaniacs. Just kidding, donors could be surely be rewarded in a creative fashion. Although, personally, I don't think most of Open source community contributors / donors would expect anything except success of Wayland / Linux Desktop.

I care little whether it is Wayland or Mir that succeeds so long as it is the best for the job and gets the (almost) universal acceptance that "X" has had for the last 30 years . That said ,if they do not "GPL" Mir - Wayland all the way . I hope I am wrong but it looks like Linux devolopement , in searcing for a new path is fragmenting itself into potential oblivion .

dee. wrote:Guys, if you really think Wayland should do a kickstarter, why not suggest it to the wayland devs themselves...

I have already done it. Currently waiting what X.Org board thinks about it. The hard thing is to find capable developers. Collabora, a private company, has paid developers to work on Wayland, but crowdfunding would be a better fit for a non-profit.

Posted Sep 27, 2012 2:14 UTC (Thu) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]It's probably fair to point out that the Foundation made an explicit choice to stop raising any more funds for some years, as we had something like $US200k in the bank, and our donors were quite understandably miffed that we weren't really doing anything with their money. That was a few years ago, and now it's just about coming time to resume regular fundraising.

23:14 <stukreit> i suppose the rejection is because it is beyond our scope and definition23:14 <Bart_Massey> stukreit: I don't think so.23:14 <+alanc> it seems like if Wayland needed more paid programmers, Intel or someone could hire them23:15 <Bart_Massey> I'm against it just because it's more Board work than I want to take on at a time when we have other things on our plate.23:15 <+alanc> much easier for them to add more programmers than us becoming an employer and having to deal with payroll & other HR headaches23:15 <Bart_Massey> I'm much more concerned with general X.Org Foundation funding, in particular, than funding for a specific project.23:15 <stukreit> actually, link it to our bylaws: we are not an org about hiring programmers. we're an educational non profit23:15 <Bart_Massey> Yes, we definitely have a policy of not hiring developers.23:15 <stukreit> so that's the reason23:15 <Bart_Massey> (Except students.)23:16 <stukreit> evoc is not a real hiring. its an internship basically23:16 <Bart_Massey> But we certainly are an org that could do Wayland fund-raising to be administered by some Wayland group.23:16 <Bart_Massey> But as I said, if we're going to do fund-raising this year, IMHO it needs to be for plain ol' X.

23:22 <stukreit> I guess wayland might be the wrong vehicle, because it already has much corporate sponsorship23:22 <stukreit> And does anyone here take seriously the "threat" of Mir?

Not getting it.. I didn't speak about a threat, but channeling the current nervous energy into something productive.

23:23 <+alanc> the developer of FreeType has raised ~ $15k via crowdfunding, a far cry from a full time developer salary

Not getting it.. Generalizing from the results of a single mediocre campaign when we know of many successful ones.

So, I'm at a loss about who might be able to pull off a Wayland crowdfunding campaign.